Now when our hearts were depressed, and we were about to turn back, behold, the Lord comforted us, and said: Go amongst thy brethren, the Lamanites, and bear with patience thine afflictions, and I will give unto you success (Alma 26:27).

Thursday, January 16, 2014

My life in the MTC (CCM in Spanish) in Madrid

My schedule is mostly, get up at
6:30, eat breakfast, have classes until 1:00, eat lunch, have more classes
until 6:00, then we have dinner, then we have classes until 9:30 then we have
to have lights off by 10:30. Not really exciting but we teach practice
investigators during the day for our training. And on Saturdays, we go to
Madrid´s parque to do contacts and me and my temporary companion Elder Ward
gave out three Books of Mormon, two in Spanish and one in English! It was
awesome to do that!

I love the
food! Toda es comida española! But most
of the people here don´t like most of it; mostly being babies about the food
tasting weird. But there is me, an Italian girl (who is Spanish
speaking) and four Portuguese missionaries (three Elders and one Hermana) who
eat all the food because they love it too! We´ve had tortilla, orange pork,
cola cao, galletas, just typical Spanish food!

There are five people in the room,
including me and we all get along somewhat. It is all really nice and quiet. My
companion, Elder Jonson, is from Lehi, so super exciting. I share a room with
him and Elders Nickerl, Stapleton and Ward, from California, somewhere in Utah and
Arizona.

We just went to the temple today and
qué bonito! Since it is right outside our building, we get to walk past it
every night! We get to go every Thursday
since it is our P-day. We also have to stay inside the CCM (MTC) the whole time
and when we do go outside it is with everybody. All together, we have 16
missionaries, 12 Spanish and 4 Portuguese and we´re getting Russians next week.

I have really connected with the
European/Brazilian missionaries even though we can hardly speak the same
language! They speak Portuguese and I speak Spanish to them but we can
understand each other just fine! We make contacts every Saturday, which means
we go out and talk to possible “Future Investigators” and my Spanish is already
A LOT better! even though I´m still a little nervous about using it. In my
district, is Me, Elder Jonson, and Hermana Costagliola, and we make a pretty
good team I think! Since she speaks Italian and learning Spanish, and I speak
Spanish, and Elder Jonson, well, he´s learning, we actually know how to
communicate with people and talk about the gospel. But this is really fun!

We have four teachers for our
district, Hermanas Suarez, Martinez y Gutierrez, y Hermano Arnal. They are
really good, since they teach us how to use Spanish more properly, and I know
this will sound a little different, but on Saturday, I feel like I could speak Spanish
perfectly while talking about the Gospel. So overall, it is amazing here! Since
it is a small group, we all connect well and it is easier for us to do things
together like go out and teach people.

The CCM (MTC) President and his wife
are leaving next week and we are getting a new one.

I also found out that my mission president is
leaving in a year so I will get a new one then too! It seems out of all the
missionaries here, the three from Brazil (2) and Cape Verde (1) for Portuguese
are going to Portugal while the one from Portugal is going to Cape Verde. Then
form here, it seems only about 5 or 6 are going to Madrid or Málaga and the
rest are going to Barcelona, and that does not include any from the Provo MTC
or native speakers. Today in about ten minutes we are to go downtown and take a
tour of it and hopefully I can get some stuff that I want/need. So I´ll talk to
all of you later! Love you!